Junkyard Dogs Read Online Free PDF Page A

true that I abused the privilege every once in a while.
    The airwaves went dead without further comment or levity.
    I glanced at the young deputy in my driver’s seat and thought about what Vic had said. He looked good, considering what he’d gone through in the last few months, what with complications stemming from having a serrated kitchen knife filleting one of his kidneys in July and the birth of his first child, Antonio, in November. I’d been easing him back into full-time duty, but it did seem that his energy level was low. “So, you wanna take this show on the road?”
    The Basquo smiled weakly as he rolled the steering wheel and pulled out. “Yeah.”
    I looked out into the frozen landscape and thought about my daughter; I thought about how she hadn’t called lately, which is what I usually thought when I thought about Cady. I blamed it on the young man she was going to marry this summer, figured they had a lot to talk about. Michael Moretti was occupying Cady’s time, and I was jealous.
    The radio broke up my infantile reverie.
    Static. “Vic just got here. Are you taking Dog to the dump?”
    I keyed the mic and reached around to pat his massive head. “Sure, with twenty-three square inches of olfactory membrane, it’ll be like Disneyland for him.”
    Static. “Don’t forget about the Stewarts’ dogs.”
    Geo had a pair of mutt wolf-dogs, Butch and Sundance, that were famous countywide as being two of the fiercest creatures this side of Cerberus. They had killed a cougar, a few coyotes, and run at least a couple of black bears off their turf—not to mention more than a few adventurous teenagers. I looked back at the now-expectant canine eyes. Mine were still swimming a slight backstroke as I keyed the mic again. “I’ll keep him close.”
    Static. “He gets filthy, you get to wash him.”
    “Deal.” Dog looked at me and smiled a fanged smile while I scratched under his wide chin.
    I turned back and studied Saizarbitoria as he carefully drove my truck out of town, and I tried desperately to see a little bit of the wayward spark in the musketeer’s eye.
    Sancho steered through the foothills outside Durant—the darkening skies were absorbing what little heat there had been and giving none. It was Monday of the second week in February and people talked less because their words were snatched from their mouths and cast to Nebraska. I had an image of all the unfinished statements and conversations from Wyoming piled along the sand hills until the snow muffled them and they sank into the dark earth. Maybe they rose again in the spring like prairie flowers, but I doubted it.
    As we made the turn where Geo Stewart had slid into the barrow ditch, an orange ’78 Ford pickup waved us down. A mustached cowboy lowered his window as Santiago switched on the emergency lights and slowed to a gentle, sliding stop on the rinklike ice.
    The Basquo pushed the button on his window, and I shouted across him. “Hey, Mike.”
    The sculptor shook his head and smiled. “Did you get old man Stewart untied from that Oldsmobile?”
    “Yep, we did.”
    “I wasn’t sure if somebody had cut him loose or if he’d just worn off.” He draped a hand over his steering wheel and checked to make sure no one was behind him. “I dropped a load of junk off at the dump, but there wasn’t anybody at the scales, so I figured you’d taken the old man to the hospital.” He drew his hand across his face and chuckled. “Ozzie Dobbs was up there unloading a bunch of stuff, and I don’t mind tellin’ you he was just as happy to not see Geo there.”
    I looked through the windshield and thought about the new housing development that had planted itself on the rise that led to the foothills just west of the dump and Geo’s junkyard. They didn’t call it a housing development, but that’s what it was, if you could call five-acre ranchettes with four-million-dollar mansions alongside a golf course a housing development.
    Redhills